


A Place to Lie Low

by Sholio



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mission Fic, Rescue, Uneasy Allies, natasha cameo, not!hydra!Sitwell, steve cameo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-01
Updated: 2014-08-01
Packaged: 2018-02-11 07:14:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2058858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two separate Hydra-hunting missions converge, and Nick Fury and Sitwell end up getting Sam out of a tight spot. Looks like they're all going the same way for a while.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Place to Lie Low

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LinguisticJubilee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LinguisticJubilee/gifts).



> This also fills my h/c bingo square "hiding an illness/injury".

In the mountains of Romania, just outside a small town that Sam couldn't remember the name of, a dead man saved his life.

Sam had met two dead men already -- Barnes and Fury -- and possibly a third one, if you counted Steve, so it probably shouldn't have come as much of a shock. The difference was that he'd watched this man die.

"Come _on!"_ Agent Sitwell snapped at him, and Sam came, if only because the roof was caving in over his head and Sitwell had just blown a nice hole in the wall for him.

He tried deploying the wings as soon as he was out of the building, but got nothing more than a metallic shriek and a sudden shift in the weight he was carrying around on his shoulders. One wing had opened partway, and wouldn't close; the other failed to open at all. God damn it. He should probably ditch them, but hell if he was leaving them for Hydra, so instead he jogged after Sitwell with forty pounds of hardware digging into his spine. Bullets kicked up little chips of the frozen ground around his feet, and then heat washed over his back and it took him a minute to figure out someone with a goddamn _bazooka_ had set up a sniper nest on the hill above them and was firing at Hydra, not them.

Somehow he was unsurprised to reach the top of the hill and find Nick Fury wearing a camo parka and resting a grenade-launcher-equipped M16 on a broken stone wall that looked like it might once have enclosed someone's pastureland.

"Hey, it's my two favorite dead guys," was the first thing Sam said, because snark was his default setting when running for his life.

"Woulda figured Rogers for your favorite dead guy," Fury said, shouldering the rifle. "You hurt?"

Sam swiped at his face, feeling the sharp ache of bruises, and his fingers came away bloody. It was nothing worse than he'd had brawling with his cousins when they were kids, though. "I'll live."

"There's a safehouse up the mountain a ways," Sitwell said.

* * *

It took them hours to get there, along winding mountain trails that would've turned a goat's ankle, patched with late-season snow. No one spoke. It was easier to fall into the steady rhythm of walking, one foot in front of the other. Sam slowly came to realize that the other two were even more tired than he was; wherever they'd been before helping him out of Hydra's hands, they'd had a long day already. Fury's parka was stained with soot, mud, and dark patches of what might be dried red-brown paint but probably wasn't. Sitwell was limping noticeably and stumbled occasionally, even when there were no rocks.

Sam wondered how far out of their way they'd gone to help him, and what that detour had cost.

They reached the safehouse as the early winter dusk came down. It was a farmhouse tucked up against a hillside overlooking a valley, and looked two hundred years old if it was a day -- part stone and part frame, with plastered walls and a steep shake roof. There was an attached barn that was falling to ruins, a tumbledown stone fence and the remains of some wood and wire fencing. The whole place looked overgrown and abandoned, but the house's roof was solid, its door tightly fitted and, it turned out when Fury took a key from his pocket, locked with a discreet, shiny padlock. Inside there was a neat pile of firewood and a stack of crates without labels. After shedding his wings by the door, Sam opened the top one and found new-looking canned goods. The one under it contained ammo in several calibers.

"You have a pickup incoming?" Fury asked. Sam looked around from poking through the top of the ammo crate. Fury had slumped down against the wall, head tilted back. He must be truly exhausted if he was letting it show like this, Sam thought. Sitwell was putting together a fire in the open stone fireplace with sure, practiced hands. 

"Tomorrow morning," Sam said. He had no idea where he was relative to the rendezvous point, or how he was going to get there. He'd planned to fly.

"What're you doing out here without backup?" The scorn in Fury's tone cut like a blade. _This never would've happened in MY version of S.H.I.E.L.D._ was the clear subtext.

"My backup's dead," Sam said. Tore the words out so he didn't have to think about it. He'd never worked with either of those guys before, but they'd seemed like good guys in the few hours he'd gotten to know them, and he made himself remember their names (Matthew Roberts; Cliff Lee) because they hadn't deserved to go down under a hail of Hydra gunfire, in what had turned out to be a Hydra trap rather than a rescue mission.

Fury tipped his head in a nod of acknowledgement and settled back into silence. He was still wearing sunglasses even indoors, so it was impossible to tell if he'd fallen asleep or not.

 _And where's YOUR backup?_ hovered on the tip of Sam's tongue, but he wasn't willing to push that hard. They'd saved his life, after all. 

Warmth from the fire was beginning to chase some of the bitter chill from the room. Sam stood and looked out the window. It was full dark outside. A few small lights speckled the valley, but this high country was lonelier and more empty than he'd known Europe could be.

"Get me out some of those?" Sitwell said, pointing to the crate of canned goods.

Sam passed him cans of beans, soup, and vegetables, and Sitwell dumped them into an enamelware pan. The next box down, Sam discovered, contained blankets -- old gray woolen ones, with Cyrillic letters stamped on the corner. He pulled out a few of them.

All the while, he couldn't stop darting glances at Sitwell, looking for traces of what had to have been a hellish set of injuries to recover from. There was that limp -- shattered ankle? shattered leg? -- and a certain crooked set to his shoulders that Sam thought might be his spine pulling sideways. Otherwise he looked pretty healthy, at least as far as Sam could tell when most of him was covered in a long coat and heavy thermal pants.

Sam turned his attention back to the crates, turning up a tin coffeepot and vacuum-sealed bricks covered in white paper and labeled in Cyrillic. He tore the end of one open to make sure it was coffee rather than, say, cocaine. "Got enough water for coffee?" 

"Only if we refill the canteens," Sitwell said. "There's a well behind the house. Should be buckets around here somewhere."

Behind the door, as it turned out: small plastic buckets stacked one inside the other. Sitwell left the pan of soup on a battered iron grate over the fire and glanced once at Fury before he slipped out the door with a bucket in his hand.

As soon as he was gone, Sam picked up a folded blanket and crossed the room to Fury. Crouching down, he glanced at the door to make sure Sitwell wasn't coming back yet. "How bad?" he asked in a low tone.

This close, he could tell that Fury's breathing was labored, though he was hiding it reasonably well. Through the smoked lens of the sunglasses, Sam saw Fury's one eye crack open. "You're a nosy guy, Sergeant."

"I'm not Sergeant Wilson anymore," Sam said evenly. "I'm just Mr. Wilson now. And I know you're hurt, and I know he suspects it, and I bet you know that too. I think you're a fool keeping it to yourself, but if you want to get my professional opinion while he's out of the room, now's your chance."

Fury heaved a sigh, then stiffly unzipped his parka, using only his left hand, and peeled it back.

He wasn't a mess. Sam had been braced for damn near anything, from charred flesh to guts held in with makeshift bandages, but instead Fury's black wool sweater was only slightly dusty and torn, the blood stains almost invisible unless you looked closely. Sam reached for the sweater's hem, awaited a slight nod of assent, then pulled it up. Fury's entire right side was one enormous bruise, with visible rib deformation and blood clotting in long stripes of road rash.

"What happened?"

"Thrown," Fury said. "Motorcycle crash. The coat protected me from the worst of it. Picked myself up -- don't think I realized how bad it was 'til I'd gone on a bit."

"About how long ago?"

"Six or seven hours."

Sam probed lightly. Internal bleeding hadn't presented to a life-threatening degree, which probably meant it wasn't going to (unless Fury managed to fall off something _else_ , which was a definite possibility). The broken ribs were an issue, though, and he didn't like Fury's shallow, rapid breathing at all.

"Can you take a deep breath?"

"Breath in and cough?" Fury asked dryly, but he did. Or tried to. It was hard to tell without a proper stethoscope -- Sam had lost his med kit in the first initial Hydra assault -- but Fury's idea of a deep breath was about half lung capacity, with a choke at the end that was clearly a cough which he had managed to stifle through sheer willpower.

"I need to see your mouth."

"What," Fury said flatly, scowling.

"Your gums. Unless you have a portable oxymeter. The color will give me a general read on how much oxygen you're getting." Not enough, was the answer he could already guess at. The altitude didn't help.

With an expression that suggested lethal force might not be far behind, Fury hooked a finger at the edge of his lip and retracted it just long enough to give Sam a teeth-baring grimace, then let it drop.

Fair enough. "Pulse," Sam said, and trapped Fury's wrist, laying his fingers across the jump of Fury's pulse while watching the seconds tick down on his watch.

There was a rattle at the doorknob, but Sam obstinately hung onto Fury's wrist 'til his watch ticked over fifteen seconds. Sitwell came in with the bucket, took in Sam crouching by Fury with only a slight flicker of expression, and went to the fire. Fury retrieved his wrist with a scowl and buried himself in his parka. Sam dropped the blanket in his lap and went back to the stack of crates without speaking.

He needed to know what kind of medical supplies they had. With luck, he wouldn't have to treat a collapsed lung tonight. But when in the last twenty-four hours had luck gone his way?

This mission had been a shitshow, an absolute shitshow from go to whoa. He'd gone in as an angel of mercy, because he couldn't say no: two former S.H.I.E.L.D. agents injured and trapped by Hydra and in need of rescue; two more backing him up. Instead things had blown up on him (literally), the guys he'd come to get out were dead, now the backup was dead too, and he just had to hope his rendezvous hadn't been compromised and he wasn't about to watch anyone else shot out of the sky.

(Again.)

Sam glanced towards the fire again, at Sitwell (supposedly dead, apparently not) filling the coffeepot from the water bucket; at Fury leaning against the wall -- he'd taken off his sunglasses and was rubbing his good eye, slumped with exhaustion that was no doubt being severely exacerbated from pain and oxygen deprivation.

Son of a _bitch._

And along with his med kit, he'd also lost his radio and was therefore out of touch until morning. Assuming he could reach the rendezvous site, which was approximately one mountain away from his current location.

He located a flashlight in the top crate, found batteries in another, and buried his frustration in a systematic inventory. He could've asked Fury, but obstinately refused to. Besides, he needed a specific set of gear, and someone who wasn't medically trained (albeit with a broad-ranging and comprehensive skill set) wouldn't be as much help as just seeing for himself.

As it turned out, the available medical supplies were frustratingly limited. It was clear that whoever had stocked the safehouse either didn't expect there would be anyone present who had surgical skills, or simply didn't think of it, leaning on food and survival gear instead. Which was fine, great even, but not what he needed. The best he had to work with were basic first-aid supplies and a handful of Army-typical support stuff -- IV equipment, various drugs he guessed were probably painkillers and anesthetic but couldn't identify for certain because everything was labeled in Cyrillic. Nice. He wondered if Fury had taken over a _Hydra_ safehouse, or if whoever stocked it had gotten a sweet deal on surplus stuff after the fall of the Soviet Union, which would mean the drugs were pretty old. Well, he wasn't going to be shooting anyone up with anything if he couldn't figure out what it was.

"Coffee," Sitwell said at his elbow, and Sam looked up to see the former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent sitting on a crate, offering him a tin cup. Up close, Sam could see the scars threading out from under his sleeves, wrapping his wrists like weird tattoos.

"Yeah, thanks." The coffee was gritty and tasted burnt, but it was hot. Sam wrapped his hands around the cup, letting the almost painful heat soak into his skin. The room had warmed up reasonably well, but it was still chilly at the edges.

Sitwell jerked his head at Fury, who had managed to sit up a little with a cup of soup in his hands. "How is he?"

"Ask him yourself," Sam said. "Medical confidentiality and all."

Sitwell snorted. His glasses winked firelight, not showing his eyes.

"Seriously," Sam said, "thanks for earlier. You didn't have to."

"Don't like leaving people behind," Sitwell said.

Now it was Sam's turn to snort. "That's the armed forces. Not S.H.I.E.L.D. The spy game is all about cutting your losses and you fucking well know it. That's why I'm a soldier and not a spy."

"And yet," Sitwell said, "you're here."

"Because _I'm_ a soldier."

A slight smile tugged at the edge of Sitwell's mouth. His head had been freshly shaven, sometime in the last few days; stubble was starting to break out and there was a visible tan line, indicating he'd had some growth of hair before. "You want to come over where it's warm and have something to eat? It's no S.H.I.E.L.D. mess chow, sadly, but it'll do."

"That good or bad?" Sam asked dubiously. He left the equipment he'd pulled out laid in a neat row in case he needed it before following Sitwell to the fire.

"Best cafeteria food anywhere," Sitwell said. He gestured for Sam's cup. Sam drained the gritty dregs and then handed it over for Sitwell to tip some of the gloppy contents of the pan into. "Which I realize is like saying 'She was the poet laureate of Illinois', but they had some really good chefs. High-end restaurant quality. Stark snaked one of our chefs at one point, which tells you something. If there's one thing I miss about S.H.I.E.L.D., it's the food."

"That's the only thing you miss?" Sam asked, accepting the cup and a plastic spoon.

"Well, also the job security, health plan, and not getting shot at every day. But the food was excellent."

 _Excellent_ definitely didn't apply here, but Sam had eaten worse and he was hungry enough not to care anyway. They ate in a silence broken only by the crackling of the fire. There was a sense of ... not camaraderie exactly, but a kind of uneasy truce, like castaways from different nations washing up on the same shore and choosing to set aside their differences until rescue came. 

Fury picked at his food and then set it aside without eating much. Sitwell and Sam took turns going to the window to look out at the dark world. It was not impossible they could have been followed, or that their smoke or heat or light might be noticed. Sam checked his guns compulsively and noticed Sitwell doing the same.

Sitwell wandered up to join him at the window while Sam was taking his own turn on the informal guard-duty-and-gun-cleaning circuit. They both stared out into darkness for a while, then Sam finally said, "So, I'm guessing you were undercover with Hydra," and okay, apparently he _was_ going to come out and talk about the elephant in the room. Sitwell inclined his head slightly but gave no other acknowledgment, so Sam went on after a moment. "Yeah. Well. Sorry about, you know -- tossing you off a building and being basically responsible for getting you thrown into the middle of freeway traffic."

"In your place I'd probably have done the same," Sitwell said.

They were interrupted by a choked-off cough from the far side of the room. Stifled, Sam suspected, not just because of pride but simply because it _hurt._ Sam holstered his gun and went to get a closer look at his rescuer-turned-patient.

Fury hadn't looked great before, but he looked _bad_ now -- gray-faced even in the warm firelight, hunched in his parka with a blanket on top of that, even though the room wasn't cold. His breathing was fast and shallow. Sam took his pulse again, finding it rapid and weak.

Sitwell crouched down next to them. He gave Fury a narrow-eyed look, which Fury returned as levelly as he could, and then looked back at Sam and said, "What's wrong with him?"

Sam figured patient confidentiality was probably out the window at this point. "Hard to say for certain without diagnostic equipment I don't have, but most likely a collapsed lung."

Fury's expression could have melted lead. Sam ignored him and unzipped the parka with practiced hands. He was in his bailiwick now. He'd dealt with more than a few soldiers in his time who didn't want to worry their buddies or thought they were tough enough to ride out the pain of what turned out to be internal injuries. Fury, at least, was smart enough to lie back and let him palpitate the injured area without fighting.

It was difficult to diagnose a tension pneumothorax in the field. He couldn't rule out that what he was seeing were cardiac symptoms, either due to the fall or some other condition that Fury wasn't likely to tell him about. Still, Sam had enough experience at battlefield triage to know that in a potentially life-or-death situation, you just had to go with your gut instincts. Sam jerked his head at Sitwell.

"Got another clean pan or something to heat water in? I need to sterilize some stuff."

While Sitwell took care of that, Sam got the med stuff and another blanket. He settled Fury in a slightly reclined position -- not flat on his back, but not sitting up either.

"The hell are you doing," Fury demanded, in a voice robbed of its usual power by shock and breathlessness.

"Aspirating air or possibly blood out of your chest cavity so you can breathe again," Sam said. "At least that's the plan." He held up one of the drug packages, having had a thought. "I don't suppose you read Russian by any chance?"

Fury glowered at him, took the package, and rattled off a short string of Russian.

"Which means what?"

"Do not operate heavy machinery while using," Fury said.

"For fuck's sake, man, I'm trying to save your life."

"I know," Fury said. He sighed and tossed it back. "They're uppers. Amphetamines."

"Not exactly what I need. But good to know."

Fortunately, in addition to Fury apparently being fluent in Russian, most Latin-derived drug names were more or less the same in Russian and English, and the third one down in the stack turned out to be Lidocaine, a common local anesthetic. Which at least removed one problem, namely that having a needle stuck through your chest wall rated pretty close to "oh fuck no" on the scale of excruciating pain.

"Water's hot," Sitwell called.

The IV equipment was sealed and sterile, but the one thing Sam didn't have was a one-way valve, which he'd need to keep air from being drawn back into Fury's chest cavity at every breath. Theoretically it was possible to improvise one from the tip of a rubber glove. Sam _had_ done chest aspiration before, years ago, but he'd never done it without proper equipment. Well, first time for everything.

While the glove boiled, Sam cut open Fury's sweater -- "Motherfucker, I liked that sweater." "Yeah, you want to try to take it off over your head right now? I didn't think so." -- and swabbed his chest with antiseptic wipes, which fortunately were easy enough to recognize even in the absence of a common language. Sitwell's eyes widened when he saw Fury's bruised and battered chest, but he said nothing, wordlessly holding a flashlight for Sam.

By now Fury was not only visibly having trouble breathing but had also stopped complaining, which struck Sam as a more ominous symptom than anything that had come up so far.

"There's no way this is not gonna suck," Sam told him. "Still, once the Lidocaine takes effect, you shouldn't feel _that_ much."

"You practice your comforting speeches beforehand or just wing it?" Fury whispered. "Just get it over with."

The actual procedure was almost anticlimactically easy: Lidocaine injection through the chest wall between the second and third ribs, followed by a larger needle, his improvised one-way valve, and an IV catheter. Fury's breathing eased within a couple of minutes, and so did some of the tension in Sitwell's posture.

"How do you feel?" Sam asked, taping things down.

He was expecting more obfuscation, most likely laced with profanity, but instead Fury said, "Better."

Coming from him, it was almost as good as a thank-you. Sam tried not to look startled. 

"He's going to need more than that, though, isn't he," Sitwell said.

"Still here, thanks," Fury snapped.

"Yes," Sam said. "This is a temporary fix." He tore open a sterile gauze pad and began to fix a dressing over the insertion area. Addressing Fury, he said, "You have a traumatic chest injury. There's some blood in the tube, which means there's blood in your chest cavity. The altitude's not helping, and your safehouse doesn't come with oxygen tanks. You need surgery and more supportive care than I can give you." He glanced at Sitwell. "If you two have a way of calling out for help, it might be a good time to consider it."

There was a brief silence; Fury and Sitwell exchanged a look. Then Sitwell said, "Are we talking emergency medivac tonight, or is this something that can wait for daylight?"

Sam thought about the logistics of evac in pitch darkness in the mountains, with hostiles around -- the likelihood of other casualties to go with the ones they already had. "Daylight," he said reluctantly. "As things stand now. That could change during the night."

Sitwell nodded, hesitated, and gave Fury an awkward pat on the shoulder before rising and slipping out the door. Sam favored Fury with a scowl as he arranged the blankets around him. "Here I've been worrying about meeting my ride, and you two had a radio the whole time. Is there _any_ damn secret you won't keep?"

"Kept me alive this long," Fury said, his gaze fixed on nothing.

* * *

The night crawled. Sam spent some time tinkering with his wings by the fire. He was no expert mechanic, but he did know how to do basic field repairs. He managed to get the half-deployed wing to retract; still, he didn't trust it to take his weight until he could get someone with more know-how to take a look at it.

Sitwell found a deck of cards in one of the crates. He laid out games of solitaire until Sam got tired of watching him and they ended up playing poker using ammo from the ammo crate as stakes. This led to some politely heated arguments regarding the exact exchange rate -- did steel jacket trump hollow point or vice versa? Did short and long ammo in the same caliber count the same or was one more valuable? It was really a moot point anyway because Sitwell turned out to be a terrifyingly competent poker player and cleaned out most of Sam's ammo stash.

During all of this, Fury drowsed. At one point during the night Sam had to undo the catheter setup and clean it when it clogged from blood clots (a process which was fun for everyone) but in general Fury's condition didn't seem to be deteriorating too rapidly. Still, despite being gritty-eyed from weariness, Sam couldn't bring himself to sleep, even after Sitwell rolled himself in a blanket and crashed for a few hours by the dying fire.

The only English-language reading materials he could find were a water-stained 1992 issue of _Guns & Ammo_ and a badly dog-eared paperback copy of Arthur Hailey's _Airport_ buried at the bottom of one of the crates, which he'd read before and hadn't liked. Neither of them were worth wasting flashlight batteries on. He was squinting at the ads in the magazine by the dim firelight when Fury said quietly and drowsily, "Good thing we ran into you, I guess."

Sam jumped and almost fumbled the magazine. "Good thing for me, too." He filled a cup with water from one of the buckets and brought it over to Fury, then held it for him to drink from. "Though," he added, checking the catheter, "there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that if I hadn't been here, you'd'a come up with something. If ever there was a guy who could jam a needle into his own chest, buddy, it's you."

Fury's laugh was hoarse and startled, and sounded like it surprised him as much as it did Sam. "You know, offer's still open," he said. "You ever want a change of scenery."

"And my answer's still the same. I'm a soldier, not a spy."

Fury nodded, as if that was what he'd expected. "Dawn's coming," he said, and closed his eye again.

Sam went to the window. The mountainside faced east, and he watched the stars wink out as the sky brightened. The valley turned gray, then color slowly began to seep back into the world. Below the window, each blade of grass in the winter-dead field was rimed with its own sheath of ice.

Movement out of the corner of his eye made him turn. Sitwell, yawning, extricated himself from beneath his blanket. After checking on Fury, he nodded to Sam and went outside. Maybe to take a morning piss. Maybe to check on their ride. Maybe something else. In any case, he vanished around the corner of the farmhouse, out of sight.

Sam went out to take a piss himself. The morning air was sharply cold. Despite that, he stayed outside a few minutes to watch the sun rise. He'd forgotten how lovely sunrise in the mountains could be. 

As golden light spilled into the valley, he became aware of a sound on the edge of hearing: a helicopter's low drumbeat, shivering the morning air.

"Ride's here," Sitwell said behind him.

"Or Hydra," Sam pointed out.

Sitwell smiled faintly. "Well, that's also possible."

"Either way, guess we better prep the patient to move."

They had nothing to use as a stretcher, at least nothing that wouldn't need to be improvised, but Fury insisted on moving under his own power anyway. Getting up made him cough, but he obstinately waved off any attempt by the other two men to assist him.

"You see what I've been dealing with," Sitwell told Sam.

"I've been running around with Steve Rogers, friend. I feel your pain."

The helicopter -- unmarked, black -- did a wide sweep across the mountainside and came to hover above the sloping field in front of the farmhouse. The land was too rough and tilted for a safe landing, but the side door opened and a figure trailing a zipline jumped down and landed lightly in the knee-high grass. Wind-tossed blond hair ... and Sam was out the door and down to meet him halfway.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Sam demanded as Steve pulled him into a rough hug.

"Right, because I'm gonna sit home knowing things went south and you'd dropped out of touch." Steve gripped the back of Sam's neck and gave him an affectionate shake that nevertheless rattled his teeth. Sam always tended to forget how _strong_ the asshole was, and he was pretty sure Steve forgot half the time himself. "Nat has a few things to say to you herself, but --" Steve pointed up at the helicopter. "-- she's kinda busy right now. Better not keep her waiting."

"God forbid," Sam said, wading through the dry, crackling grass toward the farmhouse with Steve in tow. 

Fury had somehow gotten himself out onto the stoop in front of the door and was leaning against the wall, looking asleep. When their shadows fell across him he cracked his eye open, saw Steve bending over him, groaned and closed it again. "Well, isn't this just the icing on the shit sundae."

"Hello, Nick," Steve said, sounding cheerful. "I wondered where you'd gotten off to. Now I know." Tilting his head at Sam, he asked, "Is it just you two? Roberts and Lee --"

"Dead," Sam said, pushing the words past a tightness in his throat. "The agents we went in to rescue, too." He leaned over Fury to check on the dressing so he didn't have to see the soft sympathy in Steve's eyes.

"Yeah," Fury said. He gripped Sam's arm and used that support to lever himself to his feet. "Just us two. Think we could get this show on the road?"

Sam took a quick look around. Sitwell was, indeed, nowhere to be seen. Fucking spies.

"You get him on the helo; I gotta get the wings," Sam said. He handed off Fury to Steve, and slipped into the farmhouse, pulling the door closed behind him.

As his eyes adjusted to the dimness inside, he located Sitwell in a corner, sitting on a crate not at all visible from window or door. Sam retrieved his wings from beside the fireplace. As he went through the familiar motions of buckling the straps, he said quietly, "Staying dead?"

Sitwell shrugged. "For the best, perhaps. And I have things to do here still."

Sam glanced out the window. Steve was underneath the hovering helicopter, fastening Fury into a harness to be hoisted up. "Listen, man, it's none of my business, but Steve should know. It'd be a weight off his mind, knowing he wasn't responsible for your death."

"He wasn't," Sitwell said. "Not really."

"Yeah, but try telling him that. Seriously, man," Sam said, "I really don't know how long I can keep this from him. Or if I want to."

"It's up to you then, I suppose." Sitwell tipped his head back; light from the window sparked across his glasses. "You better get moving."

"Yeah." Sam hesitated, then crossed the room and held out a hand. "Good working with you. Glad to be on the same side after all. And I owe you one. Maybe two, if you count dropping you off a building."

Sitwell's mouth curved in a small crooked smile, and he took Sam's hand in a surprisingly firm grip. "You keep running around with these bozos, you might get a chance to pay it back."

"I wouldn't mind," Sam said. "You'll be okay here?"

"Oh yes. I have an exit strategy." He cast a quick glance over the crates, still with most of their contents pulled out. "And someone has to get this place ready for the next agent who needs it."

Sam smiled. "Take care of yourself."

"You too."

Back out in the crisp sunlight, he was just in time to intercept Steve. "Anything else in there that we need?" Steve asked.

"No," Sam said.

One quick lift on the spinning end of a cable and then he was piling into the wind-whipped interior of the helicopter. A medic was getting Fury wrapped up in warming blankets, and looked like he was having a hell of a time with it. Sam decided to leave him to it, and climbed up to take shotgun. Natasha, in the pilot's seat, gave him a narrow smile and passed him a headset. As soon as he had it clamped over his ears, she said, "Fury's message didn't say anything about you being with him, so it probably won't surprise you to find out that a certain idiot was planning on scouring the mountains for you all night. You can tell they didn't have proper aerial S&R in the 1940s, can't you? I talked him into waiting for daylight."

"Good move," Sam said. He looked over his shoulder as Steve hoisted himself into the helicopter and slammed the door. Steve tossed them a thumbs-up, and Natasha wheeled the helicopter around, giving Sam a dizzying view down into the valley. It was always different looking down from the confines of a vehicle rather than the free flight of the wings. He was looking forward to getting them fixed.

"He okay?" Natasha asked, jerking her chin in Fury's direction.

"He will be."

"I didn't know you two were working together." There was something in her voice. A slight edge, maybe. Not jealousy; something a little sharper and more difficult to pin down.

"We aren't." He looked back down at the tiny cluster of buildings thrown ramshackle against the side of the mountain, watched them dwindle as he thought about Sitwell packing up the crates, loading up pockets full of fresh ammo and then heading out to wherever he was going next. "We both just needed a place to lie low for a while."

**Author's Note:**

> I can also be found [on tumblr](http://laylainalaska.tumblr.com) (with a fic announcement blog at [sholiofic](http://sholiofic.tumblr.com)). Feel free to drop by!


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